Units and Lessons

Elementary School/Special Education: Students will investigate different items in the classroom and in a local retail store to see where items are made. They will discuss what kind of items are made or grown local and research using the computer or IPAD what types of industries are in other countries. They will gain information and answer questions on why items are made from three different countries: USA, China and Taiwan .

2nd Grade
Students will learn about other cultures through studying stories about celebrations and will gain a deeper understanding of similarities and differences between their culture and their own.
Pre-Service Teachers:
Students will understand the importance of integrating global lessons into the language arts curriculum and will gain strategies to integrate cultural study into the classroom through reading and writing.

5th Grade/Social Studies: This multiple lesson mini-unit will introduce students to famous landmarks of the United States and famous landmarks of China. Landmarks of China will focus on sites in Beijing and X’ian. Students will compare, and contrast, these sites through research using a variety of media resources. Within this sequence of lessons, students will explore, research deeply and share their learning with others as a way to teach their peers about their own country and a country halfway around the world. It should be noted that this lesson, although focused on the United States and China, can be replaced with any other countries from around the world.

6th Grade/Career & Technology: The objective of this lesson series is to raise students' awareness of the growing, global issue of waste production and management. Students will gain an understanding of how much waste is being generated and steps being made to encourage reusing, reducing, and recycling products in order to cut down on waste products in our landfills.

7th Grade/Language Arts: This lesson gives students guided practice in analyzing texts and considering multiple perspectives to increase their confidence and skills in inferring, evaluation, and critical thinking. Seventh grade students are increasingly more capable of higher order thinking, which is required for secondary and post-secondary coursework, standardized tests, and living in a global world.

8th Grade/World History & Geography: This lesson seeks to explore the cultural heritage of China through the hands on involvement and exploration of Paper-cutting, the Chinese Zodiac, use of chopsticks, and the art of Calligraphy. Along with understanding the importance of rice production to Ancient China , it is also the catalyst in this lesson to understanding the seriousness of world hunger and includes the opportunity for students to take action in fighting hunger locally & globally.

8th Grade/STEM: This series of lessons provides students an opportunity to consider resource use and the implications of such use from a personal and global perspective. In a global economy within the context of expanding human population, the way we compete for, use, and dispose of resources is of paramount importance in building a sustainable future for the human species. This series of lessons is designed to help students consider the following within a global context:
1. How do we, and others, use resources?
2. What are the implications of our resource use?
3. How should I use resources?
Everyone uses resources, but few understand the implications of their resource use. This series of lessons allows students to consider this, and develop a personal perspective what how they would like to use resources in the context of an every growing, global society.

9th Grade/Language Arts: Students will be asked to research an event somewhere in the world (beyond the United States) where information (books, art, culture) has been destroyed or censored in some way. Once they have decided a topic, they will meticulously gather facts and information before creating a fictional character to insert into that situation. The character they fictionalize will be a product of their own imaginations, but he/she must be factually correct in culture, setting, and so forth. Because students will be required to tell a factual story but with a fictionalized character, students will be forced to apply both research and empathy—and hence increase their knowledge and their awareness of global issues.

9th Grade/US History: “1960s Reform Around the World” can be a stand-alone lesson, a lesson embedded in a 1960s Civil Right unit or a culmination activity of a study on reform. The idea of reform is not isolated to the American experience and can easily be made global by broadening the study beyond US borders to include people living in the same time trying to make a difference in their lives. The 1960s was a time of widespread protests and police restraints as well as shootings, executions and massacres around the world. Through selected case studies and Socratic discussions, students will investigate “1960s Reform Around the World,” recognize reform perspectives, communicate reform ideas and take action to improve conditions by participating in local, state, national or international reform movements.
“1960s Reform Around the World” naturally connects to the timeline of contemporary US History and directly connects to IA Core/Common Core Standards. Students will use an acronym from the word “reform” (relationships, evolution, freedom, organization, resolution, maintenance) to examine social conflicts in US, Mexico, Brazil, Spain, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and China . These case studies are from “1968: The Year That Rocked the World” by Mark Kurlansky. Students will use the case studies in a Socratic Seminar “to listen, make meaning, and find common ground toward shared understanding” of global reform efforts.

Grade 9-12/US Government: Students will learn the reality of risk in a free market by making decisions about what to sell in the Chinese marketplace; their performance will be evaluated based on whether the items sold, and whether they sold at above or below market price, as well as on their reflections about their decisions.
Students will make decisions about what to buy in the Chinese marketplace and will bargain for the price, thereby setting market price. They will be evaluated based on their own narrative about their choices and the reasons for their choices.
Students will understand that in a purely capitalist system, market price is the amount the buyer is willing to pay and the seller is willing to take.
Students will examine the meaning of “market” and begin to make connections between absolutes in a marketplace and theories of market economics.
Students will discuss the interconnectedness of American and Chinese markets, as a beginning point to connecting to the larger picture of the interconnectedness of currencies and their values.

High School/Language Arts: This lesson is intended to follow an analysis of Patrick Henry’s “Speech to the Virginia Convention,” a required text in the American literature curriculum. As students begin to understand the impetus for rebellion as well as the persuasive devices used by colonial leaders, they should draw parallels between the colonists’ dissatisfaction with King George III of Britain in 1775 and the Chinese people’s dissatisfaction with Queen Victoria of Britain in 1839. Students should begin to draw connections between the values and styles of their colonial ancestors and those of the Chinese people, thus resulting in an understanding of some basic similarities of various cultures despite geographical distance. Finally, students will be afforded an additional opportunity to analyze a persuasive text.

High School/AP French: Students will be able to explain the Convention on the Rights of the Child and its history. They will assess the extent to which this document is successfully applied in today's society.

High School/Special Education/Business: By the end of the Unit students will understand the universal structure of a business by comparing and contrasting business operations in the United States and China.

12th Grade/Language Arts: By the time senior students graduate from high school, they should be able to identify, examine, and analyze the identities of both self and nation. One way to explore and understand the concept of identity is through literature. This twelfth grade English unit, entitled Identifying Self and Nation through Literature, will allow students to utilize literature, in which characters seek self and national identity, to analyze and reflect upon themselves and their own nation.

High School/Freshman College/Media & Communications:
1. Formulate an understanding of media theory.
2. Define, understand, and apply such concepts as hegemony, ideology and global media.
3. Critically analyze various applications of media.
4. Evaluate relationships between developments in communications technologies, political, social and cultural perspectives.
5. Discern the roles of race, gender and class in the development of media.

This workshop will strengthen NEA leaders' abilities to build coalitions between EA and ESP locals, from the global perspective of China--specifically via the discovery and history of the Terra Cotta Warriors.

Students will analyze international declarations and compare them to the United States Declaration of Independence. Global connections will be made through evidence of commonalities in foundational documents for self government throughout the world.

1. Students will have a basic understanding of history including cause and effect, chronology, concepts of time, continuity and change and global interconnectedness (local, state, nation, and world).
2. Students will understand the interactions between the environment and human societies, and the political, economic, and social impact of those interactions.
3. Students will develop an ability to think, including a process for problem solving, recognition of multiple perspectives, and analysis.
4. Students should investigate how everyday people have the ability to make changes and impact their "community" in unique ways. Knowing historical figures is important, but realizing that all people can make history is paramount.
(4 month unit)

To enable students to compare and contrast foods, weather patterns, school calendars, and holidays of cultures throughout the world.
To enable students to correspond with various classes throughout the world via ePals.

I want students to understand that what resources we have available to us affects the choices we make. Access to food, fruit specifically, is different around the country and around the world.
Students will identify a variety of fruits and determine their natural growing environment. Students will compare and contrast the fruits native to Maine, other parts of the United States and Brazil.
Students will collect and analyze data to answer questions.

Students will read and discuss Ishmael by Daniel Quinn, and several other environmental essays to heighten their awareness of the human impact on the planet and our moral responsibility to future generations. The class will also watch and discuss The 11th Hour , a film about the consequences and solutions to global warming and City of God (DVD)” News from a personal war” a trailer documentary about the Brazilian slums. We will research the real environmental, cultural and economic connections between our class and the selected high schools in Sao Paulo and Rio. Students will also study the role of youth and civil disobedience in the 1960’s in America and in the summer of 2013 in Brazil

This series of activities are based on design principles to facilitate student voice. The objective is for students to talk about school climate issues and to subsequently pick an issue to develop into an action plan to change the school climate (a "pitch"). Hopefully there will be funds for the winning project to be completed by all students. As I learned from a recent trip to Brasil, building relationships is key to successful education. It is my hope that this lesson will help school communities start to foster a more positive school climate by building relationships and giving students a voice. Hopefully, after these activities are done at a building level, students can extend this to interviewing students from other areas and countries to evaluate similarities and differences in school climate issues, and, thus, develop a sense of global community. Also published: http://www.coloradoplc.org/lessonplans/building-relationships-improving-school-climate

Working in pairs, students will research, develop and share creative presentations on the chemical elements as valuable resources, unevenly distributed around the world. These presentations will focus on what the elements are used for, in what countries they are mined/processed and what international conflicts/controversies/issues surround their use. These conflicts may concern economics, politics, environmental concerns, human rights or any combination thereof. The students are required to present both sides of the issue and to incorporate the cultural perspectives of the people affected by the issue.

The theme of the unit will be exploring and researching the diverse cultures within our town border. We have over 70 languages spoken in our schools and many students are not connected to residents outside their neighborhood. Through the project the students will learn about the countries and languages represented in our town. They will work on creating a website that helps others understand the “Global Riches Within our Borders”. Through local study they will reach global understanding.

Using student created plays, students will compare and contrast customs/family traditions of individual class members. The students will have a basic understanding of global interconnectiveness through the use of Promethean Board connected to the internet.

Students will gain knowledge of other cultures, be able to locate specific countries and areas of the world that we are discussing. They will gain knowledge of cultural experiences and traditions that enrich the lives of the people in these countries.

This mini unit will help students develop a basic understanding of "needs" and "wants". They will compare and contrast needs and wants with children around the world and increase their awareness of other cultures through these activities.

The idea of this lesson is use knowledge of a far away place (Brazil) to better understand our own local environment. I'm using energy and electricity production as the lens for this study. Students are to recreate their own town in a very deliberate and process-based approach, concentrating on efficiency, transportation, production, and a healthy environment for its citizens. For the purposes of this lesson, students are exposed to and research different forms of energy production. Exhibits from the world are used to launch into the topic of our relationship with our resources. Students analyze the pros and cons of different energy sources and how they can best conserve locally used energy.

For years, most have been dying of too little nutrition. In many cases, this is still the case, but today more often than not, people are dying due to complications of being overfed - obtaining too much nutrition of the wrong kind. Students will: explore the causes and trends of obesity and starvation by analyzing data and articles, compare these trends between countries, and form a campaign within their school, home, community, and further to promote healthy eating and nutrition education. Skills used: technology, writing across the curriculum, collaboration, and research.

Students will research international opportunities for their chosen career fields, use presentation tools to share their research, design a recruiting tool for an imaginary buisness and reflect on what they need to do now to prepare for international opportunities in their future.

Students explore issues of water scarcity and quality as a class while learning research and presentation techniques. They begin to form their own questions about local and/or worldwide water issues, and finally they conduct small group research to present to the class.

This lesson has students examining Life Expectancy and per capita Gross Domestic Product data for a sample of countries around the world. This data will be displayed and analyzed to help address this question: Does your purchasing live determine how long you will live?

PreK-K: This unit will introduce young students to the world of paper. They will learn the many kinds of paper, the uses of paper, and will also make their own paper. They will also learn about upcycling when we recycle many different things to make our paper.

Kindergarten: Using the book Letters from Felix by Annette Langen and Constanza Droop the children will learn about other places in the world. Felix travels and the children receive letters from him from all over the world. The children will then research those places, students will learn about children in various places around the world. Plans are to interact with children in China via internet technology.

Students will integrate and build upon learning gained in world history through a global outreach initiative. Students will conduct research on the country affiliated with their outreach effort and present their findings to diverse audiences.

The global theme for this unit is our global resources. This particular unit will focus on waste management by implementing the 3 R’s; reduce, reuse, and recycle.
We live on a planet with limited resources that we as global citizens must learn to share fairly. 2nd graders can easily grasp this concept in relation to their own lives when using shared materials. This connection is a great stepping point in which to teach students the 3 R’s and how they might create a smaller footprint on the planet.

Students will create a vision of a safe environment for their school. Students will learn the cycle of violence and the skills to intervene. Students will learn how to ask for help using magic questions before the violence takes place. Students will become empowered to stand up against bullying in their school.

Students will be able to identify available immunizations, risks, and requirements. Students will be able to evaluate personal cultural beliefs regarding immunizations. Students will be able to evaluate other cultures and their beliefs in relation to immunizations.